Link Monitoring in Linux with Wavemon
Monitor radio parameters in real time using Wavemon, a curses-based tool for Linux.
When using Linux, the standard
wireless tools provide a wealth of status information. These tools
get their information from the standard kernel interface
/proc/net/wireless. While ideal for providing
pinpoint accuracy in measuring signal strength and noise data, these
tools are not designed to give an indication of performance over
time.
Wavemon (http://www.wavemage.com/projects.html) is a
terrific little tool that does precisely this. It polls
/proc/net/wireless many times each second to
give you a rolling report of how your wireless connection is
performing. Its simple curses interface keeps the code quite small,
and is ideal for including in embedded distributions (such as Pebble
[Hack #53]) to get real-time link
data from remote access points.
The main interface provides a nice graphical representation of the current link state (Figure 3-29).
Figure 3-29. Wavemon in action.
All of the statistics are updated in real time, making it ideal for monitoring point-to-point links and fine-tuning antennas on long distance shots. For an even easier to read display, hit F2 to bring up the Level Histogram (Figure 3-30).
Figure 3-30. Pretty little scrolling waves of data. ...
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